Not Quite Roses
by athenasqueen
Summary: Sasha needs cheering up, and Wolf knows exactly how to do it.


He had brushed her off again. It had to be the fifth time in a week, though Sasha had given up counting. She knew it wasn't easy, with his job, and her own, but he could have at least called, given her a hello or something. It was almost as if work was more important than she was. He was supposed to have called her today, and she had been waiting by the sat phone for most of the morning. But as the day had worn on, she had become aware that once again, this 'relationship', though she was beginning to think it was anything but that, was taking a backseat to whatever else was clearly more important to him. At least she had her own cabin on the James, meaning she could hide herself away from the sympathetic looks and the whispers of pity she was bound to get from the rest of the crew. That would have been indefinitely worse than the silence she was facing now.

There was a knock on her door, and her eyes flickered up from the phone in her hand, before she tossed it aside on the bed, rising to her feet. Crossing the small space of the room didn't take long, though she rather wished she could have dragged it out further. She didn't really want to face whoever was standing on the other side of that door. They were all good people, but in the end, they were Tom's people. And like it or not, she was still an outcast amongst them.

Her hand wrapped around the cold metal, a sigh escaping her lips before she heaved the door open. She was greeted with a lazy smile, a familiar face, and a bouquet of… weeds? The last part confused her less then the first, though, because she at least understood what they were. What she didn't understand was why Wolf Taylor was standing in her doorway, looking for all the world as if he belonged there.

Tall, dark and handsome, like some sort of Australian Adonis, it wasn't hard to see why he could make loitering in doorways look so natural. Mentally she shook the thought from her head, berating herself for even letting it form in the first place.

"I wasn't sure you'd answer," he said, breaking the silence that had formed, causing Sasha to close her mouth and attempt to get over the shock she was feeling in that particular moment. "I figured when you didn't come out…."

He trailed off, but she knew exactly what he had been thinking … _that he hadn't called. _Well, he certainly hadn't been wrong about that guess. She hadn't been expecting anyone to show up though, much less Wolf. He was a nice enough guy, and she had a great deal of respect for him, and if she was being honest with herself, she had found him quite attractive when they had first met, though she had only really had eyes for Tom at the time. But they had never really had a great deal to do with each other, leading her to wonder what had brought him here. Was he here to apologise for Tom? Was that what the flower weeds were for?

"What are you doing here?" The words finally managed to break free, no longer caught in the net of complete and utter surprise. They were the only ones she could form, though the question of what he was doing with a bunch of weeds rattled around in her mind.

"I thought you could use some cheering up," he replied with a slight shrug, holding out the bouquet towards her. "I know it's not the same but I hated to think that you were sitting in here by yourself after the Captain left you in the lurch. And I know these aren't exactly roses or whatever the popular flowers are supposed to be, but flowers are still flowers, right?"

Her fingers closed around it, and while she was mildly disappointed that this wasn't some apology from Tom, she had to admit she should have known better. He had never brought her flowers before (she refused to think of them as weeds now, not after that gesture), and she shouldn't have expected him to start now. Not if he couldn't even make a simple phone call.

But Wolf had. Someone she had barely spoken with on a personal level had done something that a man she had thought she loved had never done. And she couldn't help but feel a little giddy as she had accepted them, a bright spark in an otherwise dark week, offered up by a man who she would have never thought capable of such a gesture.

"Thank you. No one's ever brought me flowers before," she said, glancing back up from the bundle in her hands to meet the dark eyes of the Australian standing in her doorway, her lips curving up into the first smile she had shared in over a week. And she felt the weight pressing on her shoulders rise, drifting like smoke into the air.

He had done what he had set out to do, and he hadn't even realised just how much he had managed to improve her day. Selfless, thoughtful, loyal. She had noted these things about him before, but once again, it was like she had been looking through a keyhole. But now, she could see him, really see him, exactly for who he was. And she admired him all the more for it.

His own features split into a wide grin (smiling suited him, and she wondered briefly why he didn't do so more often), and Sasha was struck once again with how incredibly handsome he was. And this time she didn't push the thought away, worried that it would ruin her shot with Tom, worried that she wasn't being /loyal/. That ship had sunk before it even left the habour and she was only beginning to realise that now. All it had taken was months of missed calls, silence, and a different man to bring her flowers for her to see that she had never truly been a top priority.

"I suppose I should leave you to it," he began, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck, as if he had just realised he had been standing outside her door far longer than what was necessary. "I just… Don't let it get to you, okay? The Captain's a good guy, but you deserve better than being a secondary thought. Any woman does. And I know it's not the same to hear that from me-"

Her hand clamped over his mouth, cutting off whatever else he had been about to say. The space between them was almost non existent, and she was suddenly very aware of how close they were, nearly able to feel the rise and fall of his chest, the heat that radiated from him. Slowly, she dropped her hand back down to her side, head tilted only slightly to look up at him, breath hitching in her throat. His eyes were dark, unreadable, but she knew he had felt it too.

"No, you told me exactly what I needed to hear. All this time, I thought that maybe there'd be a chance for us… but if there wasn't a chance for us in the past, I was deluding myself thinking there'd be one now," she whispered, as if afraid anything louder would break the spell that seemed to hold them in place. "So thank you Wolf, for the flowers and the concern. It's quite possibly the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."

Her feet seemed to move on their own then, stepping back into the room, her body possessed. The door was closing almost on its own accord, and within moments, he had disappeared behind the closed door. The air that rushed into her lungs choked her, and she leaned forward, head against the cold metal, her flowers still clutched in her hand, and a feeling in her chest that nothing was going to be the same again.


End file.
